Overviews represent the overflow of listening material from each month; older releases, eps, unsolicited material and/or slightly off topic discs may find their way to these more condensed reviewlets. Always a variety to choose from in this department! AutoCad/Pantheist Audio: Found Minutes   (Thomas Park- 2000) (8.2) Though it's not obvious (to my ears anyway), the 11 e-songs of AutoCad are logarithmically-derived Fractal Ambience... A soft-but-active electrogroove chruns through Fibon 5 (2:56), rippling with energy and subdued percussion. With celestial atmospheres, beatless Asteroids 2 takes a more synth-symphonic course on its starward journey. Hemometabolists take a moody trek through a darker, more cautious soundscene of choral "ahhhs" and slowly clanging rhythms. With hovering stringsounds and exploratory drumbeats, White Dwarf seems a blend of orchestral-styled arrangements and dancefloor-bound beats. Spattering xylotones infuse Wytt-Nokomis Long Leaf with a chiming liveliness. The end comes around with Spherical (10:20), a slightly ominous (and percussion-free) expanse of long tones. The disc's potential sparkle suffers from a somewhat muddy mix; though if you've an interest in fractal-based music that shouldn't stop you from looking in on these very electronic tunes. Contact Thomas Park for more info. Black Dog Productions: Bytes   (TVT/Warp - 1992) (8.9) As a formative force of the burgeoning "intelligent dance music" movement of the early '90s, Bytes unequivocably demonstrated that computer music could move body as well as mind; Black Dog Productions is also known as The Black Dog, Plaid, Balil, Xeper, as well as indvidually identified as Ken Downie, Ed Handley, and Andy Turner... Object Orient leaps right in, with e-percussion flailing in hypermetronomic precision atop shifting, drifting organ-style synth strata. Phil 1 puts a name to the spastically-time-shifting-yet-accessible beatfests. Focus Mel exemplifies the techno-goes-tropical effect which often seems to emerge from these vibrantly busy little ditties (though, as evidenced by listening to Yamemm with a headache, the relentless pounding energies can be overbearing at the wrong time/place...) A fluid intro to Merck (4:33) wafts and chimes softly, then is pumped up by increasingly empowered drumbeats and chirping synthlines. Technotribal beats, active layers of computeriffic note patterns and dense ringing chords pile in the happily beating Heart (7:32). Historical importance aside, worth tracking down for the sheer energetic fun within (watch out for the frustratingly indecipherable liner notes though). Gas: Königsforst   (Mille Plateaux - 199?) (8.8) Wolfgang Voigt blends 65 minutes of floating, streaming (indeed, Gaseous) synthtextures with straight-ahead (though muffled) 4/4 rhythm systems. Because little or no info is given for track titles, liner notes, release dates, etc., the music is literally the message... and the message is subtly groovy. Interestingly, in the Mille Plateaux website catalog, Königsforst is listed as "dark ambient" with which I must disagree... murky, shapeless, warm and ambient, yes... dark, no. Faintly dubby bass bubbles from beneath the beat-and-flow of 1. Like an enormous, though faraway, symphony, the 3rd track's string drones expand and contract in continual, beatless layers. The only track under nine minutes in length, 4 (6:43) pours in warm currents, accented by muted tones and softly thudding e-drums. Brassy orchestral strains are detected in the rhythm-backed soundstreams of 5 (15:17). Definitely recommended if you like some syncopation in your floatation... Various Artists: Narratives: Music for Fiction   (Manifold - 1996) (8.7) Three major ambient forces contribute works based around chosen pieces of fiction in this noteworthy compilation. Passages from the inspiring texts are included in the liner notes. Paul Schutze lets flow with "Seribu Aso" (7:55), a loosely spiraling pattern of hazily hypnotic xylo-notes amid a continually steaming haze. Voice of Eye delivers another ever-mutating soundscape in the form of "Siddhartha" (26:17); monstrous fogbanks course with immense powers, writhing in intertwining currents which seem to really be happening all around you. Atmospheric, not just in mood and texture, but in nature, gathering and surging like gigantic weather formations. Processed voices are more subtle here, and the use of percussion is limited to the closing passage. "Starmaker" is Robert Rich's more-than-20-minute tapestry of sound, unrolling new sonic worlds as it unfolds. Spacious zones are speckled with mutedly random occurrences, extended drones of diffuse flutestreams, buzzing synthwaves and high-rising shimmers. Still available from Manifold, as is the recently released Illusion of Safety, Life Garden and Voice of Eye collab, The Nature of Sand. Voice of Eye and Life Garden: The Hungry Void Volume 2 : Air   (Cyclotron Industries/Agni Music - 1996) (8.5) Ten untitled tracks of live group improv add up one74 minute piece of audio-experimentations from murky, tribal-powered otherworlds... Voice of Eye and Life Garden explore textural drones, processed voice and instruments, including primitive percussion sounds. The 2nd track features much (recognizable-though-buried) wordless female and male vocals, sometimes in an ephemeral, semi-operatic style. Sometimes spooky (i.e. the phantasmally rippling wails of 3), sometimes spacey (like the wispy expanse of track 7), always surreal (as in the quietly seething multi-instrumental stew of tracks 5 (4:54) and 6)... The 9th segment reaches a cacophonous pinnacle of blurry, swirling beats before seguing into the rhythmless groaning chasms of the closer from which ghostly chorales waft. The combined effect is of a continual, organically-evolving macrocosm of sound where nothing is sure except the alluring mystery of it all. David Williams: Hello Columbus   (Ospedale Records - 1999) (7.8) A brief glimpse into the decidedly dark-and-twisty musical mind of David Williams... the title track (4:09) shifts between a softly melancholy (though graphic) electro/new age style and a thundering Goth rant with caustic guitar overtones. More subdued, Not a Gear at All merges Williams' resonant, weathered baritone with an instrumental approach which doesn't hint of the possible fury. With malice aforethought in the form of glowering guitars and strings, Listen Somewhat Awkward (3:48) sets a stage upon which Williams can prance vocally, contorting with quavering intensity and frightening postures. Not ambient, of course... but a distinctive, if somewhat unsettling, presence. E-mail Williams at DEWms@aol.com. Posted September 30, 2000 | 1999/2000 Overviews Index

AmbiEntrance © 2000-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).